Metodi e tecniche per la previsione della popolazione e delle famiglie: rassegna critica e nuove proposte

The demographic projections have recently become a crucial issue of the demographers’ work, due to the increase of requests, due to the usefulness for the decision-makers and for planning purposes and due to the possibility for them to be used like inputs for other models that study particular aspects related to the population’s structure and to changes in the composition and size of households (pollution, housing, water and food demand…). The knowledge of the future population structure is unavoidable for planning purpose, but is not sufficient. In our society, households constitute a crucial unit of demand for a variety of goods and services, such as housing, transportation and consumption. They represent an essential statistical unit of analysis when dealing with some issues such as the migration projects, the child care and elderly care needs, the per capita greenhouse gas emissions, etc. (Wilson, 2013). In this perspective, both the projected number and the types of household are often required for the purposes of planning and policy making. The aim of this thesis is the review of the forecasting models and a critical analysis of past experiences in order to analyse the international state of the art to define a specific household projection model for Italy.